Category: "Mobile"

iOS 4.3 Home Sharing Review

I upgraded my iPad to iOS 4.3 and gave the Home Sharing feature a quick try.

You have to go into Settings > iPod and enter your Apple ID before you can use Home Sharing. I have several Apple IDs… I just entered one and it seems to work.

Once you do that, the video app on the iPad will show a new tab named “Shared". Tap that and you’ll see your computers running iTunes. Tap one… and watch a stupid spinning wheel while it loads the content… the first time it’s way too long… and in subsequent times it’s still too long to be practical… after that you can actually stream video wirelessly and flawlessly.

I am disappointed about teh way you access your videos though. It requires way too many taps and too much waiting.

On the iPod app, I find it even less practical. You actually don’t see where your shared stuff is. You need to tap on “Library” to open a popup menu where you can see your computers. There again, spinning wheels and delays. Bleh…

I don’t really know what to make of this… yeah maybe watch podcasts in bed on the iPad… oh wait, I turn off my computers at night… hum…

No, what I’d really want is actually the opposite, I’d like to stream the shit out of my iPhone when I’m at work!! I don’t have my iTunes library on my work computer, so I guess it would be nice if it would just wirelessly access my iPhone, but no, it doesn’t work that way round. You can’t stream from device to computer.

What sort of works though, is to connect the iPhone to the computer and stream through the câble. But that feature was already there before iOS 4.3.

So yeah, Home Sharing: it works but I don’t know what to do with it :p

iPod Touch just got better : almost a PDA now!

iPod Touch just got better : almost a PDA now!
iPod Touch just got better : almost a PDA now!
iPod Touch just got better : almost a PDA now!
iPod Touch just got better : almost a PDA now!
iPod Touch just got better : almost a PDA now!
iPod Touch just got better : almost a PDA now!
iPod Touch just got better : almost a PDA now!
iPod Touch just got better : almost a PDA now!
iPod Touch just got better : almost a PDA now!

Up to recently, the iPod Touch was just lacking too many features. But it just got better: when loaded with version 1.1.2 of the firmware, you can now edit your calendar and contacts directly on the iPod. If it had notes and/or todo lists with that it would be the hell of a good PDA.

Now, I think I need to get one. Christmas sounds like a good excuse ;)

Thank you to Mike Penny for the photos. More from Mike:

It IS cool, and I have to say the only reason I bought an iPod Touch is because of the calendar & diary features. I was not going to buy one that I had to Jailbreak. There are as yet - at least as far as I can see no other applications that work on it, but I am looking. There aren't even any games on the iTunes site that work yet.

About Apple Design

"Apple's design is supposed to be the ultimate perfection in 21st century computing. We should all learn from them."

I get that a lot when discussing b2evolution's user interface (which, btw, I like to think has improved significantly in version 2.0...)

While I do like what Apple does; while I do think Jonathan Ive is one of the greatest designers of our time; I still need to rant a little before I dive into the present day :>

So here's the top 5 user interaction design "mistakes" I would never have made if I has the final word at Apple's:

  1. A mouse where you never really know when you're going to left or right click, unless you really pay attention;
  2. An iPod that requires up to ten keypresses to exit shuffle mode while listening to a playlist;
  3. A mouse that gives Windows switchers a hard time with no control over acceleration, not even in the most obscure hidden place of the control panel. (Not even from the command line actually);
  4. A wireless keyboard with no numpad (not even an option);
  5. A battery you cannot replace, not even by turning one single screw. (How comes they got that right on the iMacs?)

And I won't even start with the marketing decisions (leaving a lot of features out of the iPod touch, etc.)

Of course, I'd make a lot more other mistakes, but still... Besides what's the use of a personal blog if not for pointless rants... :P

iPod touch: what's missing!

So that new iPod touch that Apple presented today is pretty nifty, isn't it? And Steve's keynote was pretty entertaining too.

Yeah well... there's quite a few missing features (no it's not the Beatles) that itch me... even before I lay down the $399 I will no doubt end up spending on this (nonetheless) beautiful peace of art. And Especially:

Podcasts: yes, so it has WiFi and a browser and an online music store... but what about podcasts? You subscribe to podcast in order to get new episodes when they become available. The least I'd expect from a WiFi enabled portable podcast player is to actually get the episodes of the podcasts I'm subscribed too. Not a single word about that...

...well maybe it is actually there. Maybe Steve just didn't mention it because they haven't found a way to gently rip you off with it, as they're getting ready to do with their iPhone ringtone business! Think about it: you already bought a full length song (at a fairly high price). Now Apple lets you clip out 10 seconds of that song to use as a ring tone. All you have to do is pay another $.99 for those 10 seconds you already have on your iPone! Why exactly did people applause to that?

Email: can you name one single good reason why this thing doesn't include a POP3/IMAP mail client? Does Apple's partnership with Google go so far they're going to encourage us to use Gmail instead?

And by the way, if Google rules, where's the Google maps application?

Edit: The new $20 iPod Touch upgrade finally addresses that!

Games: Steve proudly showed off the games on the new iPod nano. What about the iPod touch? Can I play all the games I purchased for my iPod "classic" on my soon to be iPod touch? Odds look pretty bad...

PDA features: This device now clearly has the capabilities of a top of the line PDA. It just lacks some software to do it right. Todo lists, anyone? Can you at least edit your calendar and contacts on the go? You couldn't do it with the previous iPods and Steve didn't mention it. It would be odd not to be able to do it, but then again, the software on this one is so trimmed down compared to the iPhone that I'm a little scared...

Edit: you can now edit calendar and contents in version 1.1.2.

Now of course, what I should really do is get an iPhone... Especially at the new $399 price! Yeah... if only they were available in Europe... (fingers crossed for Apple Expo Paris this September).

Camera: Actually, now the iPhone is just $100 more than the iPod, does it really make sense not to have a camera built into the high-end iPod? ... well, that would make it a killer blogger tool for sure. And again, the iPhone is *not* available everywhere, not even in certain regions of the US where there is no AT&T coverage...

USA mobile travel survival guide

TL;DR: when you travel from Europe to the US for several weeks, sign up foT AT&T’s prepaid phone plans and T-Mobile’s monthly WiFi plan. Then, pray for coverage!

Ok, I’m sitting in the train right now. Going from Chicago to Kansas City where I’m gonna meet Danny from the evoTeam. I’m actually writing this offline since there is no WiFi on the train. I’d almost say “of course”, but hey, this is the US! You would expect WiFi just about everywhere, wouldn’t you?

I’ve been disappointed by the internet connectivity last year in California. I am again this year in Chicago :P I mean, I stayed at the Sheraton twice, which was the official hotel for internet related conventions, and both times the connection was about the speed of ISDN. As if they had the whole hotel (‘bout 1600 rooms!!) hooked up on a single DSL connection. And you wanna know how much they charge for that? $11.95 per day!

Actually the best connection I got in Chicago was at the Red Roof Inn, which errs on the shady side of how Chicago hotels go, but it has just enough class to provide a T-Mobile hotspot. That costs $39.95 / mo and the catch is you have to call in when you want to cancel. Other than that, the speed was great and you can also use it at any other T-Mobile hotspot, including Starbucks.

Mind you, you can’t use it at Mc Donald’s which has AT&T hotspots and apparently AT&T and T-Mobile weren’t smart enough to come up with a roaming agreement. (Ok, let’s consider it to be just another good reason to stay away from Mc Donald’s :P)

Ironically, I am now a customer of AT&T too... for my mobile phone. I figured their pre-paid offer was a better deal for my 6 weeks in the US than T-Mobile’s... but wouldn’t it make a lot more sense if either of these companies offered a complete all-in-1 package to the international traveler? Pre-paid cell-phone + WiFi... how hard can that be?

Anyway, the cool thing about AT&T’s « Go Phone » offer is that if you recharge it with $100, you get to keep your number for 1 year even if you don’t use it. Very convenient when you come to the US once or twice a year and don’t want to get a new SIM card & number everytime you arrive.

Other than that, I pay $1 per day I use the phone and then 10 cents a minute. If I was roaming from my French provider I would be paying 2.50 € aminute... that’s... errr... at least 3.something dollars a minute.

Text messages (SMS) are 5 cents a piece. Even to international numbers.

The shady side of the story, of course, is coverage. I don’t know if any mobile phone carrier actually covers or roams all of the US, but I do know that this girl from Kansas, sitting next to me on the train, has had far less dropped calls than me since we left Chicago. She’s on Verizon.

The problem with Verizon though, is that it’s not GSM. So you don’t use SIM cards. You can’t use your European phone and worse... once you’re back home, you can’t check your voice mail anymore...

So there you have it: AT&T for cell, T-Mobile for Wi-Fi... Let’s see if they keep it happy all the way over to San Francisco.

Can I really end this post without a note on the iPhone? Yeah well... if I buy one here I have to sign a 24 month contract and won’t be able to use it back in France. Figured I’d just wait for the Euro version. But of course, I do hope that it will accept my AT&T SIM card when I come back! ;)